Holiday Planning and Booking Process - UK - May 2019
Overview
 
What you need to know
While holidaying intentions among Brits remain stable, Brexit and economic uncertainties are bringing unwanted storm clouds over the holiday market. However, the Brexit delay should boost summer holiday bookings, especially to European destinations, given that consumers will be more reluctant to commit to trips later in the year.

Although online bookings dominate the holiday market, travel agents still play an important role in the planning and booking process. One leading aggregator, icelolly.com, has acknowledged this by launching a pilot where local/relevant travel agents are included in search results. However, the share of online bookings is expected to rise as Mintel expects the independently-booked holiday segment to grow at a faster pace than the package holiday segment from 2020 onwards.

Brands are investing in optimising search technology and content personalisation to make it easier for travellers to plan and book their customised holiday. Making holiday bookings as easy as possible should remain among the top priorities for brands as this aspect has a relatively big influence on consumers’ choice of holiday provider.

Covered in this Report
This Report examines the behaviours and attitudes of UK (United Kingdom) adults concerning how they research and book domestic and overseas holidays. A holiday is defined as including at least one overnight stay. The business travel and VFR (Visiting Friends and Relatives) markets are not included in this Report.

An adult, for the purposes of Mintel’s research, is anyone aged 16 or over.

For the purposes of this Report, Mintel asked a number of questions to UK adults about the ‘main holiday’ they had taken in the last 12 months. This was defined as the holiday on which they had spent the most in terms of travel and accommodation. Mintel has categorised the following types of holidays:

Package holiday: a package holiday is considered to be a holiday in which a return fare and accommodation are purchased from one provider for a single price. Other elements, such as meals or excursions, are not essential to the definition of an inclusive tour. This definition is in conjunction with the IPS (International Passenger Survey).

Independent holiday: the traveller organises and books transport and accommodation from separate sources, or books with the same retailer but more than 24 hours apart.

Linked travel arrangements: An example of a linked travel arrangement is when someone purchases a flight on an airline’s website and subsequently clicks on a link that redirects them to a separate accommodation site. If the customer books accommodation either immediately or within 24 hours, without their details being transferred, then this is classed as a linked travel arrangement. Since 1 July, 2018 these arrangements have offered financial protection, although at a lower level than package holidays.

Mintel’s consumer research does not establish whether or not services purchased via separate sources were classed as linked travel arrangements. Therefore, these bookings are defined as independent holidays for the purposes of this research.

For standard travel and tourism definitions, see Appendix – Data Sources, Abbreviations, and Supporting Information.